MB&F unveils MusicMachine 3 to celebrate milestone
In conjunction with its tenth anniversary this year, MB&F crafts a powerful music player, the MusicMachine 3 (MM3). With its cutting-edge and futuristic design, MM3 is a beautifully-arranged high-end mechanical box that takes inspiration from classic films like Star Wars, The Godfather and James Bond
After a decade of delivering highly acclaimed calibres, the world’s first ever horological concept company, MB&F (Maximilian Büsser & Friends) continues to form its legacy as an artistic and micro-engineering laboratory dedicated to designing and crafting small series of radical concept watches. Testaments to the brand’s ingenuity are the accolades it garnered over the years, including the Best Concept and Design Watch for the HM4 Thunderbolt that was awarded at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève in 2010, the Public Prize (voted for by horology fans) and the Best Men’s Watch Prize (voted for by the professional jury) for the Legacy Machine No.1 – both awarded at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève in 2012. Other awards achieved were the renowned Red Dot Design Award for The HM6 Space Pirate that was presented at the International Red Dot Awards in Essen on the 29th of June, 2015.
Since its inception in 2005, MB&F has been at the forefront of new-age technology and deliberately designed unconventional horological machines and historically-inspired legacy machines. This year, to celebrate its decade milestone, the brand’s founder Maximilian Büsser unveiled the MM3; an extraordinary mechanical masterpiece that perfectly demonstrates the brand’s slogan: “A creative adult is a child who survived.” Inspired by his love of Star Wars, Büsser poured his passion into the remarkable new release and true to the Star Wars TIE fighter design concept, the designers at MB&F worked tirelessly to collaborate with Reuge, the renowned music specialists with over 150 years of experience, to craft a contemporary piece with lattice-like vertical wings that support and protect dual music cylinders, which are each capable of playing three melodies. Reuge is a pioneer in the music box business that started life in a musical pocket watch shop in Sainte-Cox in Jura in 1865. After more than a century, Reuge still remains as the leading manufacturer of high-end music boxes, serving the world with classical and contemporary designs. This year, Reuge partners with MB&F for the third time to deliver the latest instalment of the MusicMachine that serves to complete the successful trilogy that began at Baselworld in 2013.
The MM3’s unusual appearance is remarkably out-of-this-world, inciting images of the dark depths of space with bright asteroids in the distance. The spacecraft design of the machine cleverly incorporates essential music box features; musically tuned combs, pinned cylinders, winding mechanisms, mainspring barrels and regulators. In detail, the music in the MM3 is powered by two independent movements that are mounted on the two tail sections. Each movement has its own winding key, disguised as thrusters, a mainspring barrel, horizontal cylinder with pins, and comb with hand-tuned teeth sounding each note. The cylinders are capable of playing three melodies each. An air regulator in the form of a circular fan (resembling a rotating radar dish) governs the unwinding speed/music tempo of each cylinder.
To create bass notes, the tooth is thickened by the traditional method of adding lead. A machine then tests the frequency of each tooth, and slivers of material are removed to accurately fine-tune each note. These hand-operated tools used in this intricate process were developed in-house by Reuge. Tiny transparent, synthetic feathers are added behind the bass note teeth, acting as dampers. Once the comb is attached to the main plate using heat-blued screws, the musician’s ear is required to fine-tune the sound.
Meanwhile, the beautifully hand-finished cylinders gleam like a pair of imposing power reactors. These cylinders essentially contain the melodies’ ‘scores’ with as many as 1,400 precision-placed pins plucking the teeth of the comb as the cylinder revolves. The Reuge musician determines precisely where to place each pin; each of which is shaved to ensure uniformity of length and then polished. Finally, hot resin is applied inside the cylinder, which, when hardened, rigidly fixes the pins to maximise sound quality. Once one melody is played, the cylinder moves along its long axis to align the right pins with the right teeth to play the next melody. Each melody corresponds to one complete revolution of the cylinder.
The frustums (truncated cones) resembling propulsion thrusters on each side of the tail section are actually winding keys that are linear with the mainspring barrels and cylinders. This is an unconventional configuration for music boxes, but MB&F’s daring design dictated it. One advantage of the using the linear configuration allows a more efficient transfer of energy. These winding keys – a challenge for Reuge’s team to get just right – revolve as the barrels unwind and the cylinders turn.
In the centre of MM3’s main plate are distinctive vertical circular panels. While these might look as though they could be radar dishes used for navigating an asteroid field, they are actually the cylinder speed regulators. When fully wound, the mainsprings have more torque so they tend to rotate the cylinders faster than when nearly all the energy has dissipated. To compensate, these circular fan air regulators provide exponentially more resistance when rotating faster than slower, allowing for a more constant revolution. A similar system is found in many minute-repeater watches.
Another striking feature of the MM3 is its impressive resonance. To optimise and amplify the sound, Jeanmichel Capt of JMC Lutherie developed the MM3's ingenious resonance base. With this machine, energy is transmitted from the vibrating teeth down though the vertical side wings to the resonance base, which not only amplifies the sound, but underlines the beauty of the music. The music box’s innovative base combines a 350-year-old resonance spruce with 21st century composite materials like NomexTM honeycomb Kevlar.
While the look of the MM3 is very much Star Wars, its music is set in the era of films and TV soundtracks of Büsser's childhood: the 1960s and 70s. The right cylinder plays themes from Star Wars (1977), Mission Impossible (1960), and James Bond (1962), while the left cylinder plays themes from The Godfather (1972) by Nino Rota, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and The Persuaders (1971) by John Barry. Available in limited edition, the MM3 is produced in 33 pieces with white finish, 33 pieces with black finish and 33 pieces with chrome finish.
